Our Com­pany His­tory

The Thomann family has lived and worked for music for seven decades. We have collected a few interesting milestones of our family company history. From the humble and arduous beginnings, through the successes of the older and more recent past, to the music of the future.
Old family house
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were just a handful of houses - including the Thomann farm - with livestock farming and agriculture in Treppendorf, the main location of our company.

But music was Hans Thomann Senior's hobby and passion. And so he spent more and more time travelling around, playing with circuses, brass bands and musicians - and doing business with them. His wife Betty always had his back, looking after the farm and the children in his absence.
The Thomann Siblings

The Thomann Siblings

Elisabeth Neser (Accounting), Stefan Thomann (IT), Gabriele Röder-Thomann (VIP & Guest Manager), Hans Thomann (CEO) und Doris Thomann-Resch (Financial Auditing)

1954

A wish

In 1954, Hans Thomann Senior decided to quit his job as a travelling musician (including with the circus, see picture) and set up his own music business. On the side, he continued to look after the family farm and travelled almost daily to Würzburg, 70 kilometres away, to study the trumpet.
A wish

1970

The Wild 70s

Over the years, more and more of the Thomann farm's living quarters were converted into exhibition and sales areas. And Hans Thomann Senior had already made a name for himself. The product range grew steadily: it was the glorious time of organs, guitars and the first synthesizers. As a young boy, Hans Thomann Junior was already allowed to work in the shop and make his first deals.
The Wild 70s

1980

Living in a Shop

This is what the shop looked like in the late 80s - very well-arranged and modest. The barn was both the lighting department and the box store. The former children's room became the accounts department. On the left of the picture is the Thomann family home. It was demolished in 2023 to make room for the gradual expansion of the shop.
Living in a Shop

1990

Handover of the management

After 36 years as business owner, Hans Thomann Senior retired from the company. He was replaced by the eldest son, Hans Thomann Junior, who still runs the company today.

Just two years later, Hans Thomann launches the "Hot Deals". The first advertising brochures (approx. 10,000 copies, mainly distributed in the region) contained almost 100 articles without pictures. Later, the pictures were simply cut out of the manufacturer's brochures and the texts were collected by the printers personally from Treppendorf on handwritten scraps of paper.
Handover of the management

1996

Pioneer on the Internet

In 1996, we were the first music retailer in Germany to launch our own website. At that time, orders could be sent to us by e-mail. Initially, they were printed out, taken to the individual departments and answered by post. In the meantime, this would probably be somewhat impractical with over hundreds of thousands of emails per day.

One year later, we took over the largest mail order company for musical instruments in Germany at the time - Roadstar. The number of customers doubled to almost 100,000.
Pioneer on the Internet

1999

Shop expansion & Customer Service

Outsourcing has never been our thing. While other companies at the time were following the trend of outsourcing call centres to low-wage countries, we wanted our telephone advice to be available locally. We like having our colleagues around us and so the decision was quickly made to set up our future "Customer Service" department in Treppendorf. At the same time, the new large PA/lighting hall with adjoining studio and drum department was built on the site of our former neighbours. The planning and realisation of the room acoustics alone (with ambiophony) took two years.
Shop expansion & Customer Service

2001

Thomann Audio Professional

Due to the growing demand for advice and realisation of large-scale audio and effect installations, we decided to set up a separate department for this line of business. Since then, “Audio Professionell” has been furnishing theatres, town halls, museums, concert halls, discos, cinemas and more.
Thomann Audio Professional

2003

Thomann & Treppendorf are growing

The year 2003 can undoubtedly be described as the start of a veritable marathon of construction work in Treppendorf. It all began with the "logistics centre". This was followed by a container warehouse, a four-storey office building and new showrooms for our guitar, brass and string departments (2005). Shortly afterwards, the new supply warehouse was built (2006). This was followed by the completely new service building with amphitheatre (2013), another shop conversion (2014), our own restaurant "t.kitchen" (2015) and the new logistics and dispatch centre in 2017.
Thomann & Treppendorf are growing

2008

New Thomann Online Store

In order to cope with the onslaught of over two million customers from all over Europe at the time, our entire website was redeveloped from scratch and comprised over 120,000 lines of programme code in 2008. Two new data centres with a total of 160 Thomann servers ensured fail-safe operation. Since then, the website and infrastructure have been subject to constant further development by a large number of colleagues.
New Thomann Online Store

2015

brand eins: The Man Who Defeated Amazon

The "brand eins" business journal devoted the title story of its April issue to Thomann. This company portrait was commissiond on the occasion of the release of "Sucess Factors in E-Commerce", a study of e-commerce which named us the best online store based on customer surveys. We achieved top rating in several individual categories, such as website design, service, and delivery, and thus managed to overtake giants such as Amazon. The thing that makes us happiest about all this: we have the best and the most loyal customers.
brand eins: The Man Who Defeated Amazon

2022

New home for the Customer Service department

As soon as the expansion of the logistics area was completed, new, fundamental plans for Thomann and Treppendorf were launched.

A stately new building was to be constructed right next to the previous administration building, with more office space, meeting rooms and room for our entire Customer Service department, with over 300 employees from around 20 different countries. After years of planning and construction, the building and parking garage were inaugurated in 2022.
New home for the Customer Service department

2022

More output in content and logistics

We also created a new building complex for our marketing team for the production of social media content, with a total of three fully equipped video studios to meet the constantly growing demands.

The second "marathon" is rounded off by a further high-bay and forwarding warehouse, as the next gigantic extension to the existing logistics and dispatch center. But that's not all...
More output in content and logistics

2024

The biggest music store of all time

In 2024, Thomann celebrates its 70th anniversary - an outstanding success for the founding family and all employees. And the superlatives don't stop there.

CEO Hans Thomann is currently planning to expand the shop at the main Treppendorf site. The shop will grow from its current 5200 m² to over 10,000 m² of showroom, sales and storage space.

The work should be completed by 2026.
The biggest music store of all time

The times they are a-changin'

Take a 360° Tour of Our Operation

Gui­tar De­part­ment
Light­ing/PA
Drum De­part­ment
Stu­dio De­part­ment
Piano De­part­ment
Brass & Wood­wind
Strings De­part­ment
Or­ches­tral Per­cus­sion
Ware­house
Ship­ping Centre
Am­phi­theatre
t.kit­chen

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